Hawk Down

The Atlanta Hawks had a dream 2014-15 season. They won 60 games and made it to the conference finals for the first time in franchise history, they were the seventh team in NBA history to have four All-Stars in one season and they were the poster boys for a proposed philosophical shift in the way teams without superstars would construct their rosters.

Atlanta was legitimately good last season. They had plus starters at every position and Mike Budenholzer, a Pop disciple, is one of the game’s better coaches. But after a solid start to their sequel campaign that had the team as high as the second seed a month ago, the Hawks just completed an underwhelming 15-game stretch that saw the Bulls and Heat surpass them in the standings and the Raptors firmly supplant them as the second best team in the East.

Atlanta went 6-9 in January1 and posted an offensive rating in line with Philadelphia’s (99.7, sixth worst in the NBA last month).2 After establishing such fantastic chemistry last season, Atlanta’s starters haven’t been quite as good this year, and they have been especially bad lately. The Hawks’ starters played 166 minutes together last month; they had a minus-7.4 net rating and conceded 108.1 points per 100 possessions.3

The loss of DeMarre Carroll figured to set the Hawks back a bit, but the emergence of Kent Bazemore, who has been fantastic this season (he has 46/41/84 shooting splits), has filled the gap as well as the Hawks could have reasonably hoped from an in-house solution. Paul Millsap is an all-star for the third straight season and Al Horford was one of the “last players” out in this year’s East field. After accounting for the drop off from Carroll to Bazemore, Atlanta’s frontcourt has mostly played up to the standard it set last season.

Jeff Teague and Kyle Korver, on the other hand, have not followed up their all-star seasons quite so well.

Korver’s sudden decline is one of the most shocking and under-discussed stories in the NBA this season. He has gone from the obvious fulcrum on a proportional team to a one-dimensional wing with a muted impact. After flirting with 50-percent shooting from deep on six 3-point attempts a game last season, Korver is shooting 12 percent worse from beyond the arc (37.1 percent).4 Korver’s impotence has severely hurt the Hawks’ offense, which has dropped from sixth last season to 15th.

Teague’s struggles have also impacted Atlanta’s decline. Teague is shooting 42 percent from the field, down from 46 percent last season. He has a 25.0 assist rate, the lowest of his career, and a 12.6 turnover rate, the highest of his career. In January, opponents outscored the Hawks by 6.7 points per 100 possessions and their offense was barely functional when he was on the floor.

On the other side of the coin, the Hawks blitzed opponents by 15.5 points per 100 possessions with Dennis Schroder on the floor in January. Schroder isn’t a better scorer than Teague, but he has the same speed when turning the corner on pick-and-rolls, and the team undeniably performs better when Schorder is on the floor. Schroder has been Atlanta’s best player this season by net rating and at 22, he figures to have considerable more potential than Teague.

With Schroder waiting in the weeds, the Hawks are said to be shopping Teague as the trade deadline nears. The problem for the Hawks is that the market for a borderline all-star point guard has never been worse.

Case and point: Teague made the all-star team last year and was not even in the conversation this season while six other East point guards (Kyle Lowry, John Wall, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, Isaiah Thomas and Reggie Jackson) were. Look around the league and try to find a team that does not have a point guard better than Teague or a significant investment in a point guard younger than Teague (like the Magic with Elfrid Payton or the Nuggets with Emmanuel Mudiay).

That query produces few results: Brooklyn and New York, mainly. You could make the case for Dallas because Teague is younger than Deron Williams and Teague’s speed makes him a prime candidate for the coveted Dirk bump. Perhaps you can extend as far as Utah, a team with a potential-laden point guard, Dante Exum, who is recovering from a serious knee injury. If the Jazz wanted to make a playoff push this season, bringing in Teague and moving Trey Burke to a backup role would probably improve their chances.

But then we get to the question that makes this situation doubly difficult for the Hawks: What team is dying to give up valuable assets for a point guard who only has one or two seasons on record of being an all-star caliber guy?

Teague is a good player, but in the modern NBA, the standard for starting point guards is higher than that, at least for playoff teams.

Dallas is too smart to leverage what few future assets they have for Teague, and the Hawks are not going to want a Williams-for-Teague swap. Although Brooklyn has made some irrational win-now moves in the past, it is hard to see them giving up anything significant for a 27-year-old point guard while the team is in the midst of a regime change. Utah is a team with a bright future, so trading any of their young pieces to get Teague, who would be a one-year rental in a best-case scenario, would be a mistake.5

The Knicks, who were interested in Teague around this time two seasons ago, make the most sense. Langston Galloway and Jerian Grant have had their moments, but Teague would be a substantial upgrade. The problem is that New York has little to offer Atlanta unless the Hawks are simply looking for a way to get Schroder the starting job as soon as possible. The Knicks could do something like Jose Calderon, who has a contract analogous to Teague’s and would be a decent second or third string option for a Hawks team that loves spacing, Lance Thomas, an intriguing role player, and a pick for Teague. But if the Hawks accepted that offer, they would be low on a player who has been good for them for many years.

Even as the Hawks fought their way to the conference finals last season, there was a feeling amongst the NBA public that their Finals candidacy was fraudulent. The Cavaliers did not help the Hawks build up any legitimacy when they swept them in the conference finals, with only one game being close.6

Now Atlanta is struggling to put the pieces back together and its magical run last season is starting to look more and more like an aberration. At this point, it might be logical to conclude that the Hawks hit the their ceiling under a perfect set of circumstances last season, and if that wasn’t enough, it might be time to reconsider their approach. And that might be as simple as finding a way for Schroder to take over the team.

Atlanta is 27-22, matching its loss total from last season (60-22) before the all-star break. ↩

Strangely enough, the Hawks had the No. 2 defense in the NBA in January despite their horrid performance and mediocre record. ↩

Korver’s 3-point percentage (37.1 percent) would be the second lowest mark of his career since he shot 35 percent from deep with the Sixers in 2007-08. He only played 25 games that season. ↩

Teague would be a rental in the best-case scenario because the best-case scenario for Utah is Exum returning and living up to the pre-draft hype next season. ↩

It must be noted that the Hawks had injuries to two key players – Carroll and Korver – in that series that didn’t help their chances, though I’m not sure they would have been able to force the Cavs to a sixth game at full strength. ↩

Mark Travis is a 22-year old sportswriter that is currently majoring in Sports Media at Oklahoma State University. He started his own website, But The Game Is On, in 2008 as an outlet for his praise of Michael Crabtree and has since been credentialed by major organizations like the NBA, NFL, MLB, Nike and Team USA Basketball. He also covered the past two NBA Finals for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.